On the road in Texas, where oil is king again

The increase in US oil and gas production buys some time in terms of resource scarcity and depletion concerns, Warren writes. The windfall also brings with it time to wisely reflect about what America’s energy landscape should look like for the generations that follow.

By
Jennifer Warren, Guest blogger /
July 26, 2013

Eric Gay/AP/File

(Read caption)
A drilling rig is shown near Kennedy, Texas. Texas’ oil production represents about 25 percent of US oil production, according to the Texas Railroad Commission.

It was a 102 degree-hot, mid-July, typical summer day travelling on the road to West Texas; a nine-hour, high-speed journey made with numerous gasoline pit stops. Passing by Midland-Odessa, the commercial hub of the Permian Basin, was a stretch of energy mecca some 20 miles or more, filled to the brim on either side with oilfield services firms — transmission gear, pump equipment, fracking services, and other oil and gas-related businesses. Pumpjacks, also known as nodding donkeys, scattered across swathes of the expansive oilfields. Signs with “Home for Your Workforce” in Pecos and Odessa cropped up a couple of times. Workers, and their firms, are settling in for a boom which could last for many years to come, like the second boomlet in the 1970s and early ’80s that followed the Middle East oil crisis. Bust followed boom in Texas to the mid-1990s.

The Mega-Basin

The scale of energy production in the Permian Basin looks mammoth. The Permian Basin produced more than 270 million barrels of oil in 2010, over 280 million barrels in 2011, and 312 million in 2012. In percentages, production increased 10% in 2011 and 35% in 2012. Texas’ oil production represents about 25% of the U.S. oil production, with the Permian housing 57% of Texas’ oil production, according to the Texas Railroad Commission.